Statement by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley regarding the recent incident in Paris

Eid Khutbah Ihsan Mosque 24/09/15 by Hajj Abdassamad Clarke

Originally posted on muslimsofnorwich.org.uk

الله أكبر، الله أكبر، الله أكبر، الله أكبر،  الله أكبر،  ولله الحمد

اَللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ  اَللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ كَبِيراً والْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ كَثِيراً وَسُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ بُكْرَةً وَأَصِيلاً،

لاَ إلَهَ إلاَّ اللَّهُ وَحْدَه، صَدَّقَ وَعْدَه، وَنَصَرَ عَبْدَهُ، وَأَعَزَّ جُندَهُ وَهَزَمَ الْأَحْزَابَ وَحْدَه.

أشهد أن لآ إله إلاّ الله وأشهد أنّ محمَّداً رسولُ اللَّهِ صلّى اللَّهُ عليه وسلَّم وعلى آله وأصحابه ومن تبعهم بإحسانٍ إلى يوم الدين. أما بعد:

تاريخ اليوم العاشر من شهر ذي الحجة، في السنةِ ألفٍ وأربعِ مائةٍ وستة وثلاثين

الله أكبر، الله أكبر، الله أكبر، الله أكبر،  الله أكبر،  ولله الحمد

We are here in the season of the Hajj on the day of our Eid. On the tenth of Dhi’l-Hijjah, the Muslims in Makkah stone the jamrahs, shave their heads, leave behind their ihram and perform the tawaf al-ifadah. It is good that we consider some of the meanings encompassed in the rites which the Hajjis perform and the sacrifice which those of us able to do so make on this day after this prayer. These rites are some of the most ancient known to man and are transmitted to us and confirmed by the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, for this age in which we live.

The rites of the Hajj revolve around Adam and Ḥawwā’, and Ibrāhīm and his family, peace be upon them all.

The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “الْحَجُّ عَرَفَةٌ Hajj is ‘Arafah.”

ال القاضي وإنما سمي الموقف عرفة لأنه نُعِتَ لإبراهيم عليه السلام فلما أبصره عرفه، أو لأن جبريل كان يدور في المشاعر فلما رآه قال قد عرفت، أو لأن آدم وحواء عليهما السلام التقيا فيه فتعارفا، أو لأن الناس يتعارفون فيه (المناوي _ فيض القدير)

The Qāḍī said, “The place of standing was only called ‘Arafah because it was described to Ibrāhīm, peace be upon him, and then when he saw it he recognised it; or because Jibrīl used to go around the sites of religious significance and when he saw it he said, ‘I recognise it’; or because Adam and Ḥawwā’, peace be upon them, met there and recognised each other; or because people get to know each other there.”

‘Arafah is from the Arabic root meaning “to recognise”. From this same root we also derive ma‘rifah ‘knowledge, recognition or gnosis’, which is the very beginning of the dīn as that understanding of Divine essence and attributes, and the attributes of the Messengers by means of which the Muslim can worship Allah without association of partners with him. Used denoting the direct lived knowledge of Allah, exalted is He, it also denotes the end of the dīn itself. Thus the people of knowledge refer to people possessing this particular ma‘rifah as‘arif bi’llah – gnostic of Allah.

BETWEEN THE PONYTAIL AND THE BURKA By Hajja Rabea Redpath

Originally posted on May 12, 2014 @ ladyaisha.org

Talk given January 11th 2014 by Hajja Rabea Redpath, Director of Lady Aisha College - Cape Town

A‘udhu billahi mina sahaytan ar-Rajeem, bismillahi arRahman ar-Raheem.

La hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi al-Aliyyi al-‘Atheem.

Allahumma salli ‘ala sayyidina Muhamadin ‘abdika wa rasulika an-Nabi al-Ummi

wa ‘ala aalihi wa sahbihi wa sallam.

As-Salamu ‘alaykum everybody, and welcome.

The purpose of this talk is to look at the needs and requirements of the modern-day Muslim young woman, and how we can help her. It is clear that we are in a rapidly changing age and there is a need to readdress and confront what the young woman needs in this new age we live in.

MAGNA CARTA AND THE END OF THE POLITICAL CLASS by Shaykh Abdalqadir al-Sufi

Posted June 23, 2014 on www.shaykhabdalqadir.com

The worst result has occurred in the issue of the trial of the men accused of terrorism. The trial was ordered to be held in camera, that meant in private unwitnessed by citizens or media. The evidence and the summation withheld from the people. The excuse was ‘national security’ – as yet undefined even in the law justifying the principle. The laws destroying the great and up until then honoured foundation of British society was enacted under a Prime Minister now revealed as a mentally unstable psychopath. Worse than his madness was his slavish obedience to the financial masters of Britain since 1945, the U.S.A. The laws that dismantled the great defining document of civic freedom, the Magna Carta were direct copies of the set of laws by which America dismantled the legal framework of the Founding Fathers.

At appeal the affair was decided by Lord Gross who declared that the sensitive matter (the evidence on which they stood accused) should be held in camera but that the rest of the trial (an inhibited defence) could proceed in public.

Who is Lord Gross? This is a man who attended South Africa’s most prestigious Jewish school, Herzlia, and then presumably turned his back on the injustices of apartheid to find a high place in English law. Now, having disdained the inhumanity of the South African regime, he sits in authority on an English bench and first pays lip-service to Magna Carta then smashes it in his judgement.

The accused will still stand judged on an unheard evidence. This doubly weakens civic society, for one group can now argue that the accused were victims of agents provocateurs and it was this that had to be concealed from the citizens.

If this fundamental and primal law of civic society is as it now is both traduced and then rejected – what, we must ask is of worth? What merits security? Or is it that national security is a euphemism for a national prison of its inhabitants.

As if to cover the open crime of Lord Gross, traitor to English justice and to his own people who were slaughtered in their million by the simple original mechanism of arrest without trial, the Prime Minister declares the traduced law a basis of our intrinsic values.

In Israel Cameron grovelled for acceptance, declaring that his family had jewish blood. An Israeli general walked out, declaring:

‘That cuts no ice! He thinks we think like Hitler thought we thought.’

Cameron’s loud affirmation of our ‘basic values’ in the middle of a campaign of denigration aimed at Muslim British citizens held up Magna Carta just as the shameful Law Lord was destroying it. Well, here, it is a Muslim leader and a Scot defending it and now to teach the poor man about values.

Let us call things by their proper names.

We take our definition from ‘The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, Vol. 2’.

Value: Middle English and Old French.

That amount of some commodity, medium of exchange, etc., which is 

considered to be an equivalent for something else.

The material or monetary worth of a thing: the amount at which it may be 

estimated in terms of some medium of exchange or other standards of a 

like nature.

Therefore to establish justice in our commonwealth, the proposal of this loyal Scottish Muslim citizen is that the political-class which invented should now abolish VALUE-ADDED-TAX since to tax value surely is to de-value.

CROWN AND CIVIL SOCIETY – THE CROSSROADS by Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir al-Sufi

[Taken from www.shaykhabdalqadir.com]

In Britain a legal decision has been taken that represents an absolute severing of the most fundamental element in what has been our boast for eight hundred years. Again and again the governance of Britain has been called to account over centuries and tested in this matter. First monarchy, then parliament, and then in that wedding of crown and people that became the renowned compromise between monarchy and a two tiered parliament – one elected by the masses and the other a hereditary land-owning house of correction and honing of common law – which was to become a praised model across Europe. At the end of the twentieth century the unbalanced socialist premier put the final marker on the House of Lords, already fatally wounded by the decision to create life-peers chosen by government. Opposed by Lord Cranbourne, direct descendent of Queen Elizabeth I’s ruling family, the Cecils, the hereditary principle was abolished, reducing the second chamber to an extension of the Commons. Thus one chamber government in effect destroyed the British Constitution.

The weakening of parliamentary government was exacerbated by the slow restructuring of Commons’ practice following World War II. The Conservatives were reformed from a gentry-based farming party to a new-rich business party while the socialists moved from being a trade-union based workers’ party to being an Americanised middle-class party.

The new century saw the gradual surrender of Britain to what, 1945 had made clear, was the new role of post-industrial Britain, a financial clearing-house under American control. It was this transfer that was the real explanation of the otherwise inexplicable entry of Britain into military adventures, first in Iraq, then in Afghanistan. This entrapment in turn led to a series of changes in the law which radically redesigned the British legal system. With the new and undefined concept of ‘national security’, directly following America’s path to abandonment of its own past, Britain’s civil order began to unravel.

Now, with the new situation, Britain stands to lose its long heritage of protected liberty, and that means to break the tie that binds monarchy to people.

Before defining this affair it is vital to put on record that it is in no way an oblique defence of the men on trial. I am, over years, on record opposed to the follies of political Islam and its bastard offspring, terrorism. What is at issue is the decision to hold a trial in absolute secrecy, on grounds of national security. Further, let us put on record our disgust that the jewish law Lord, Lord Carlile, has spoken in its favour. That is something that for a modern jew is shameful, for it was such a decision in Germany that ended with an unchallenged mass genocide.

Our great guide in all matters of civil society’s health and preservation, the noblest and most important voice of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Ferguson, spoke clearly. He said:

We must admire, as the key-stone of civil liberty, the statute which forces the secrets of every prison to be revealed, the cause of every commitment to be declared, and the person of the accused to be produced, that he may claim his enlargement, or his trial, within a limited time. No wiser form was ever opposed to the abuses of power. But it requires a fabric no less than the whole political constitution of Great Britain, a spirit no less than the refractory and turbulent zeal of this fortunate people, to secure its effects.

It is nearly the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, which alongside specific laws relating to land tenure, and kingly obligations, laid out a clear law assuring an accused person a trial in public hearing before his peers. Today it is about to be rescinded.

If these prisoners are tried in camera, in secret, and unwittnesed it will reverberate throughout Britain and indeed, the world. It will break Parliament’s bond with the British people, and worse, it will end justification for a monarchy indifferent to this essential human mark of liberty.

Islam in Britain Series by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley

PART 1 - The Way Forward 

PART 2 - Education and Islam  

PART 3 - Sharia

New courses starting at MFAS

MFAS Autumnal Term Opening Weekend. 2 Free Muslim Faculty lectures. 2-5pm. The Curve Auditorium, The Forum, Millennium Plain. Norwich UK

▶ For all lecture and course info, go to:
• http://themuslimfaculty.org/welcome

Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley on Radio Asian Fever

Live in Leeds on Radio Asian Fever with RJ Shahab Ud'deen - Ramadan 2013

ZAKAT and AWQAF
TASAWWUF

www.radioasianfever.co.uk

Muslim Education and the Art of Matchmaking by Hajj Uthman Ibrahim Morrison

Muslim Education and the Art of Matchmaking
by Hajj Uthman Ibrahim Morrison
via The Muslim Faculty for Advanced Studies

"I am one of the Muslims!" by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley (@Leeds Makkah Masjid)

Islamic Sufism in the West by Dr Aziz El-Kobaiti Idrisi

Please find the video by clicking on the following link http://themuslimfaculty.org/islamic-sufism-west

Dr. Idrissi tells the story of the first arrivals of Sufism in the West and the various strands, both orthodox and heterodox, that developed there. He focuses particularly on the Shadhili Darqawi order and then takes as an example, the Habibiyya order that under the tutelage of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi (Ian Dallas), and became known for a period as the Murabitun. The lecture is based on the book of the same name published by Diwan Press.

A Response to the Woolwich Incident by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley

This video is taken from the British Muslim Network

Extract from the 'Book of Strangers' by Ian Dallas: read and explained by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley.

Extract from the 'Book of Strangers' by Ian Dallas: read and explained by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley. In English with Spanish subtitles.

Buy the book here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Book-Strangers-Ian-Dallas/dp/0887069916/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367532511&sr=8-1&keywords=book+of+strangers

The Transformative Nature of Islam by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley

The following is a transcript of a Khutba given by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley on Friday 23rd June 2000 [taken from Aisha Bewley's Islamic Home Page]. What he presents here is directly related to our own situation here in Leeds and, indeed, anywhere in the world that Muslims live. It is hoped that posting this will inspire the Muslims here, myself included, to think outside the box, so to speak, and to take the deen forward. 

He calls us to look firstly at ourselves and secondly the community at large and to not become content, but rather constantly chip away at, reform and polish ourselves and in doing so our situation. Islam is by its nature transformative, at both the individual and the communal level. Those who tell us that we don't need to change are in fact lying, whether or not they know it. They are also limiting the Deen, and stunting their own spiritual development and the development of any who imagine their advice to be worthwhile.

Anyone who looks at our history will clearly see that the earliest Muslims, under the leadership and guidance of the Rasool, peace and blessings be upon him, were constantly working to improve themselves and encouraging each other in the same pursuit (refer to surat al-'Asr for the Quranic imperative). From this we can see that community, that is jama'a, is therefore a necessary element of the deen and a condition of its establishment. 

We have an extremely important role to play in the re-establishment of the deen, and those who take on the task of its re-establishment will be remembered by history and, more importantly, will be given a generous reward by the Lord of the Worlds.

May Allah make this transcript, which were originally the words of a great man of Allah, a benefit to the community here and may Allah open our hearts so that we may embody its meanings. 

-Yusuf Rowland

Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley
Picture posted with the kind permission of Qiyama Media
[qiyamahmedia.com]

First Khutba

As for him who overstepped the bounds and preferred the life of the dunya, 

the Blazing Fire will be his refuge. 

But as for him who feared the Station of his Lord 
and forbade the lower self its appetites, 

the Garden will be his refuge. 

(79:37-40)

That is because Allah would never change a blessing He has conferred on a people 

until they had changed what was in themselves. 

Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. 

(8:54)

The second ayat is repeated twice in the Qur'an and is usually quoted in the context of improvement, in other words: Allah will not make things better for us until we better ourselves. But in fact, although it clearly can mean this, the meaning both times it is used appears to be the opposite: that Allah will not make things worse for us unless we change for the worse. The change can be in both directions. The important thing to grasp from the ayat is that everything in existence is in a state of constant change and that this also applies to Muslims both as individuals and communities. Islam is a dynamic, it is a process, it is an organic patterning. It is not a fixed, solid structure, a rigid legal framework which you somehow get hold of and fit yourself into. It is vital to understand this if we want Islam to spread and become fully established and implemented in the world again.

Dallas College is Recruiting New Students for 2013

www.dallascollegect.com

Discourses of the Secular by Abdalhakim Andersson

Discourses of the Secular:
Thinking about language and law in the modern age

Abdalhakim Andersson is currently Director of Studies at The Muslim Faculty of Advanced Studies 

A video of this talk is available The Muslim Faculty on Vimeo.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم وصلى الله على سيدنا محمد وعلى ءاله وصحبه أجمعين 

Abdalhakim Andersson
MFAS Director of Studies

The purpose of the following lecture – entitled Discourses of the Secular – is not to cover the full spectrum of secular ideas and realities in the modern age. Nor is it to make pronouncements about the virtues or vices of secular societies. Rather, it is an introduction to some perspectives that might help us to understand how the the secular, in its various discourses, defines our way of thinking and acting in the modern world. In order to make these perspectives comprehensible and useful, however, we will begin by defining our terms and clarifying the basic ideas.


Secularism and the secular

The classic thesis of secularisation identifies three essential elements: firstly, a structural differentiation of social spheres resulting in separation of religion from politics; secondly, a privatisation of religion; and thirdly, a decreasing social significance of religion. Many aspects of this thesis have been challenged by modern scholars, but although the debates are interesting, it is not our aim to challenge the secularisation thesis itself. Our purpose is rather to discuss the idea of secularisation, not only as a descriptive thesis, but as a normative idea or discourse that shapes our lives in modern society.

Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley on the Four Madhhabs

An invaluable discourse on the Four Legal Schools of Thought by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley.
The Shaykh gives a very concise overview and reflects on the state of the madhhabs in the modern context.

The Four Madhhabs of Islam

Available at
diwanpress.com

This collection tackles the issue of the four madhhabs of Islam in a ground-breaking and thought-provoking way. 

“The Four Madhhabs of Islam and Their Relationship with the Present Time”, by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley presents a historical understanding of the origins of the madhhabs and their development which allows us to grasp our present situation in a new and liberating way. 

Aisha Bewley focuses upon the often misunderstood term, the ‘amal, or practice, of the People of Madinah. 

In his paper, “The Importance of Malik and the Maliki Madhhab Today”, Dr. Yasin Dutton considers the importance of Imam Malik’s magisterial work the Muwatta’, in preserving our historically most valid – because closest to the source – transmission of sunna and hadith. 

In the fourth contribution, Shaykh Abdalhaqq shows how the deen reached him (and the other authors) in transmitted practice from the first community. Together, they show that just as a way based exclusively on scholarship and study of texts can be paralysing and inhibiting, and to it can be attributed much of the helplessness of contemporary Muslims, recovery of transmitted practice backed by scholarship is a dynamic and liberating way that can lead to a new flowering of the deen in every age.

Click here for more details and to purchase

Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley Leeds Dars (and a brief biography)

Dars delivered by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley at the national dhikr gathering of the fuqara of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi in Leeds. 09/11/2012

Please click on the following link to hear the dars:

Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley Dars 09/11/2012






Shaykh Abdalhaqq accepted Islam in 1968 and spent some years in Morocco studying the Deen. Since that time he has worked with Shaykh Dr Abdalqadir al-Sufi on the establishment of Islam and Muslim communities, which has led to periods living and teaching in Nigeria, the US, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Spain, the Caribbean and the UK.

He is the author of Islam, its basic practices and beliefs, Zakat: raising a fallen pillar and a number of other works. In collaboration with his wife, the renowned translator Aisha Bewley, he has been responsible for The Noble Qur'an: a new rendering of its meanings in English, Al-Muwatta of Imam Malik and Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah (ash-Shifa) of Qadi Iyad.

Shaykh Abdalhaqq currently resides in Norwich where he is the Rector of the Muslim Faculty of Advanced Studies.

Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley on 'The Journey' A talk given at the Qadiriyya Moussem 2012

Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley on 'The Journey'
A talk given at the Qadiriyya Moussem 2012

The Legalisation of the Deviation of Tasawwuf, by Shaykh Abdalhaqq Bewley

An address delivered at the 12th International Fiqh Conference in Cape Town, South Africa on Saturday 17th October 2009

As many of you will know, a group of us were invited earlier this year to a meeting of Sufi tariqas in Marrakesh organized by the Moroccan Ministry of Awqaf. I would first like to say that the event was extremely well organised and that the hospitality of our hosts was impeccable from beginning to end. I am, however, using our experience there as an illustrative example of a worldwide phenomenon whereby tasawwuf – sometimes consciously, frequently unconsciously – has been utilised to serve the purposes of a political agenda which has nothing to do with Islam and which ends up presenting it as something very different from what it has always been throughout Islamic history.


I will start by quoting directly from the official website of the Sidi Chiker Gathering – the name given to the meeting we were attending – a list which can in a way be summarised as the stated objectives of the organisation:

The idea which presides over the Sidi Chiker Gathering rests on the conviction that the Sufic Path, which has its source in the Qur’an and Prophetic Tradition, has contributed everywhere throughout the Muslim world to the edification of Islamic society and its civilisation in numerous ways:

• Spreading Islam by peaceful means and by example.
• Elaboration of methods for assuring a professional class among the Muslims.
• Elaboration of a moral path for the perfecting of the individual at a religious and social level.
• Diffusion of the love of God among the People of the Path.
• Giving weight to the interior dimension of Islam and assisting the individual in the acquisition of noble virtues.
• Promoting cooperation and solidarity
• Establishing an intellectual and literary patrimony with the object of promoting a spirit of self-abnegation and love of truth, that truth whose knowledge gives man the aspiration to remain true to the sacred trust of tawhid which he takes on in conformity with the noble mission which God has assigned to him.

Now I would like to contrast that agenda with the comparatively recent historical examples, from the 19th and 20th centuries, of five different tariqas across the Muslim world. Let us first take the example of the Naqshbandi Tariqa in the Caucasus. At the beginning of the 19th Century the Russian Empire expanded into the Caucasus which had, until that time, been an Ottoman territory. The task of defending Islam against Russian domination fell to the hands of the Naqshabandi tariqa under the leadership of Imam Shamil. The first battle against the Russians was fought in 1832 under the leadership of the then leader of the tariqa Shaykh Mansur. He was killed and the murids were utterly defeated. Only two escaped the slaughter, one of whom was the badly wounded Imam Shamil, a highly educated ‘alim respected for the depth of his knowledge throughout the whole of the Caucusus. He recovered from his wounds and went on to re-establish the rule of shari’a throughout Daghestan and Chechenya. For the next nearly 30 years until 1859 he fought tooth and nail in the face of incredible hardships and personal tragedies to preserve the integrity of the deen in the Caucasus. He was finally forced to surrender but, by Allah, was treated with great respect by his Russian captors and received by the Czar himself. He was exiled to a mansion in Kiev, where he spent nearly 10 years. He was finally granted permission to go on Hajj and en route was greeted with great honour by the Ottoman Sultan, becoming his guest in the Topkapi. The seal was set on his glorious life, after the completion of his final Hajj, by his death in Madina and his burial alongside the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, in the cemetery of al-Baqi.

My second example is the Qadiriyya Tariqa on the other side of the Muslim world in Algeria. There is, strangely enough, a direct connection with Imam Shamil. Imam Shamil went on Hajj for the first time as a young man in 1825. While he was there he met another very learned young ‘alim from the town of Mascara in western Algeria whose name was Abdalqadir al-Hasani. They apparently spent a lot of time together and spoke at length on many different topics, including that of how to defend the deen in the face of the serious threat of the encroaching colonial powers. Not long after Abdalqadir returned to the land of his birth the French invaded Algeria. He became shaykh of the Qadiri Tariqa and for the next seventeen years, under the title Amir Abdalqadir al-Jaza-iri, he fought tirelessly against the French domination of his native land and the imposition of a legal system contrary to the laws of Allah which that entailed. The inhuman nature of French brutality against his countrymen eventually forced Amir Abdalqadir to surrender and, in violation of a promise they had made to allow him to go to a Muslim land, they exiled him to France. As in the case of Imam Shamil, however, they treated him with respect, confining him in the Chateau of Amboise in the Loire Valley. The purity of his niyya was confirmed by the fact that he was soon allowed to go to Damascus where he spent the rest of his life, eventually being buried at the feet of his acknowledged master, Shaykh al-Akbar Ibnu’l’Arabi al-Hatimi.

There is a postscript to this story that shows that the work of the awliya extends beyond their death and which also has immediate relevance to our gathering here today. At a certain point in the fairly early days of his Islam, our esteemed ra’is, Abu Bakr Rieger, reached the end of his tether with the situation we were then in in Freiburg and, breaking loose, decided to run off with Fatiha to get away from the community and everything connected to it. They arrived at the River Loire and decided to visit the Chateau of Amboise, knowing, of course, nothing whatsoever about its history. They connected with a tour which was being taken around the castle and imagine the surprise of the the ra’is when suddenly, out of nowhere, he heard the tour guide say, “This is the appartment where Shaykh Abdalqadir lived while he was in France.” He later told me that that was the moment he realised that there was no escape and that his destiny was sealed!

My third example is that of the Mahdiyya Tariqa in Sudan. Towards the end of the 19th century Muhammad Ahmad, known as the Mahdi, drove the British and their influence out of Sudan and established the rule of the shari’a throughout the country. In 1885 he took Khartoum and made it his capital. Although he died of natural causes soon after this the Islamic governance he established remained in force for well over a decade until 1898 when his community was finally defeated by General Kitchener at the Battle of Omdurman. The fourth example is the Sanussiya Tariqa. Under its founder and his successors the tariqa established a vast but unified area of Islamic governance from Libya right across the Sahara into West Africa and later valiantly defended it with considerable success throughout the whole of the first half of the 20th century against both the French and the Italians.

My final example is what happened with our own tariqa at the end of the first decade of the 20th century. It was clear by then that nothing was going to stop the French turning Morocco into a so-called French protectorate. A meeting of awliya was convened at which it was decided that our tariqa would take a two-pronged approach to the situation. The fuqara of the Middle Atlas under the Awlad Sidi Tayyibi would take up arms and fight the French, whereas Sidi Muhammad ibn al-Habib would remain in the Gharb and protect the deen, keeping it alive in the great Cities of the plains. The mountain fuqara fought on for fourteen years eventually being bombed into submission in 1926. We ourselves used to go and stay with Sidi Salih who was the shaykh of that branch of our tariqa in the 70’s and 80’s and who had himself fought and been wounded in that conflict.

And as we know we owe everything we have to the tireless work of Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib who stuck staunchly to his task and preserved the deen in the face of the French occupation for sixty years throughout both Morocco and Algeria until he was able to pass it on intact to our Shaykh who has himself been true to the task entrusted to him and has spent his life protecting it and passing it on to us. May Allah reward him and give us success in taking it on and passing it on in our turn.

I hope that what will have become clear from these five examples – and any number of other examples which could also have been elicited from every epoch of Islam – is that the primary task of the people of tasawwuf in each era is to take every single necessary step, no matter what the cost, to ensure the complete integrity of Islam and the greatest possible implementation of Allah’s deen, inwardly and most importantly outwardly, in the particular time and place where they find themselves. I hope it will also be clear that the list of objectives of the Sidi Shiker Gathering I read out at the start of this presentation in no way adequately reflects this reality.

At the beginning of the 1980’s it became obvious to those who run the world’s affairs that the approach that had been taken to Islam and the Muslims up to that point was no longer viable. In the pre-colonial era their approach to Islam had been one of outright hostility and rejection. The practical exigencies of colonialism changed this into an arrogant assumption of superiority and overt attempts at subversion. The post colonial period, which saw the appearance for the first time of large numbers of Muslims in the heartlands of the colonial powers, caused another change. The first approach, adopted in the belief that the colonial attempts to subvert Islam had been effective, was to simply pretend it did not exist. Once, however, it became evident that Islam was not going away and that, far from withering on the vine, new growth was springing out in every direction, a new approach was clearly needed. The burgeoning self confidence of Muslim populations throughout the world helped on by the Iranian revolution and Mujahidun successes in Afghanistan made a new strategy for dealing with Islam an urgent imperative and the one adopted was the Good Muslim, Bad Muslim dialectic. It was possible to actually see this strategy being put into place step by step over the period of a couple of years during the early 1980’s.

Good Muslims submit to the established authority of the state, play their part by working hard and effectively in the communities where they live, pay their taxes, and provide a much needed moral element in the new world order. In return for this they are permitted to worship in their mosques and to attend meetings of dhikr, as long as that does not interfere with the right of anyone else to behave in almost whatever way they like. They must accept the status quo, become good citizens, be endlessly tolerant of other people’s lifestyles whatever they are and whatever they believe in, tow the global line and on no account rock the boat. Any other kind of Muslim is de facto a bad Muslim, a fundamentalist, a fanatic, probably a terrorist, someone who wants to oppress women, stone people to death and cut off their hands and heads whenever possible.

The point is that under the terms of this dialectic there are only these two alternatives; if you are not one then you must be the other. Both of them are, of course, in Islamic terms, totally unacceptable but the depressing fact of the matter is that we, the Muslims, have by and large accepted this definition of us. The tiny minority of actual terrorists and suicide bombers, whose methods have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam and owe almost everything to the nihilistic political theories of 19th Century European anarchism, have of course played right into their hands. Almost worse than this, however, has been the willingness of the vast majority of Muslims to accept the other alternative in this false dialectic and allow themselves to be fooled into accepting its definition of what it is to be a good Muslim.

Unfortunately the majority of both the leaders and the followers of the great Sufi tariqas, who in fact at the same time constitute the vast majority of the world’s Muslims, have themselves fallen into this trap and are falling over themselves in the race to be categorised as Good Muslims rather than Bad ones. Some have done this out of a purely venial motivation, chasing after the considerable funding available for groups who encourage moderation and tolerance among their followers. Others do it for political reasons in order to align themselves with the anti-terrorist, pro-democracy policies of their governments and their governments’ paymasters.

Yet others do it because they simply have not understood the nature of the world they live in. It is as if they think that today’s world is still the same as it was two centuries ago when the shari’a was still in place in many countries and a quietist approach to tasawwuf, sometimes permissible under strong Muslim governance which is fully implementing the shari’a, was still appropriate. In fact, of course, Allah’s laws are being flouted in every country in the world, Muslim or non-Muslim, and every true Sufi knows that there can be no haqiqa without shari’a. To imagine that tasawwuf can be properly practised in the present situation without its practioners doing everything in their power to change it shows ignorance of the real nature of the Sufic path and, as we have seen, runs completely counter to the example of our rightly guided predecessors who left no stone unturned in their determination to protect Allah’s deen and see it implemented in its entirety.

Given this analysis it is clear that, wittingly or unwittingly, the Sidi Chiker Gathering, like so many organisations of a similar nature, falls squarely into the Good Muslim camp. Although there were many positive aspects to our stay in Marrakech, three unfortunate instances stand out in my memory which made this abundantly evident.

One of the lectures given during the symposium was delivered by a so-called shaykha from California. Although it was couched in more or less sufic terminology, it might as well have come straight from Haight Ashbury in 1968. It was a classic “universal peace and love” message from the height of the hippy era in which the presence of classical Islam played an absolutely minimal role but which was presented seriously as a valid depiction of the Sufic path. It took a Darqawi shaykh from Aleppo, who was unable to contain his indignation at what had been said, to stand up at the lecture’s end and tell the woman in how many ways what she had put forward was totally opposed to a correct understanding of tasawwuf.

The second instance was connected with the actual organisation of the gathering. We were told one evening that there was going to be a session of dhikr. We went to the hall where dinner was being served. At one side of the hall there was a stage and shortly after the meal commenced a group of singers beautifully dressed in white jellabas and red fezzes appeared on it and sat in a semi circle facing the assembled guests. They proceeded, it seemed to me somewhat reluctantly, to sing qasidas in that most intoxicatingly melodious way that only Moroccan singers steeped in the centuries old Andalusian tradition are able to. The result was that the sublime verses of Ibn al-‘Arabi and ibn al-Farid, describing the highest spiritual states it is possible for a human being to achieve, were drowned out by the loud clatter of hundreds of sets of cutlery and banal chatter of hundreds of careless voices, as they were reduced to being background music to the meal. One or two of the delegates simply walked out in disgust. I am ashamed to say that I was one of the many hundreds who stayed eating the admittedly delicious food.

The third instance took place over two stages. The main administrative organisation of the gathering was conducted from the foyer of the extremely luxurious hotel in which most of the delegates were being accommodated. I had to alter my travel arrangements on the night before the last day of the gathering and the person in charge of such arrangements sat at a desk in the foyer. I had seen him dealing with the various travel problems of many delegates with the utmost efficiency and courtesy over the course of that day. In front of me was a small middle-aged American who wanted to change his business class return ticket to New York which had been paid for by our hosts. The discourtesy and foul language used by this man are difficult to describe and he treated the good natured and most proficient travel agent, who was doing his best to help him, with a contempt I was embarrassed to witness. He was full to the brim with self-importance and insisted that he had to be in New York by a certain time in order to attend a vital meeting at the United Nations with the president of one of the Central American republics. It was a ghastly display of the worst kind of American arrogance and self-obsession.

Imagine then my dismay when I discovered that this same man was to give the keynote speech on the final day of the conference. I sat there wondering what on earth he was going to say about Sufism, given the appalling behaviour I had seen from him the previous evening. It was even worse than I feared and a little way into his lecture he explicitly said that to be a Sufi you did not actually really need to be a Muslim at all. This time I did walk out. How, I wondered, could the organisers have allowed such a thing to be said in the city of Shaykh Jazuli and Qadi ‘Ayad. The only conclusion I could draw was that they must indeed have been extremely eager to be considered Good Muslims.

The upshot of all this is that, as demonstrated by the Sidi Chiker Gathering and many other similar organisations throughout the world claiming to represent the Sufic Path, the role of tasawwuf within the Muslim umma today has been deviated drastically from the pivotal crucial position it has always held throughout the whole history of Islam. The great tariqas were largely responsible for the spread of Islam around the globe in the first place, then for preserving the integrity of Islam both inwardly and outwardly – the zawiyyas and khanqas of the Sufis have always been places devoted as much or more to teaching and implementing the basic practices of the deen as they have to any kind of spiritual training – and, as my examples showed, for the unremitting defence of Islam against its enemies when that became necessary.

This pernicious deviation of tasawwuf has ensured that the great tariqas have been reduced to emasculated and impotent shadows of what they were intended to be, unable to fulfil the function for which their great founders, may Allah have mercy on all of them, brought them into being. Unfortunately the deviators have all but succeeded, in that rather than being people whose lives are spent actively propagating, preserving and protecting Allah’s deen in its entirety, a large number of the leaders and the great majority of the followers this deviated version of tasawwuf have become passive, docile and, in many cases, willing participants in a system which is explicitly dedicated to the destruction of Islam.

There will, however, always be true men of Allah who, by Allah, will ensure that the great tradition of real tasawwuf, that river of the transmission of every aspect of Islam, which had its source in the Messenger of Allah, salla’llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and has illuminated and invigorated every generation of Muslims since, will never come to an end. We have Allah’s promise for this and I will let Him subhanahu wa ta’ala have the last word as He most certainly will in all our affairs in this world and the Next. He says in Sura at-Tawba:

They desire to extinguish Allah’s Light with their mouths. But Allah refuses to do other than perfect His Light, even though the kafirun detest it.

It is He who sent His Messenger with guidance and the Deen of Truth to exalt it over every other deen, even though the mushrikun detest it.

Source: http://www.shaykhabdalqadir.com/content/conference2009.html